Fed
by laletrice
Summary: Gideon and the Footpath Killer. The strange dynamics of predator and prey.


The patch of yard behind Gideon's rowhouse was postage-stamp-sized, a rectangle of neatly-clipped grass barely a hundred feet square surrounded by a high fence with a gate that gave onto the shared rear alley. A shaggy dwarf poplar with a stone basin of trickling water beneath it was spaced exactly two-thirds of the yard's width from his back door. Three birdfeeders swung from the poplar's branches.

Gideon kept the feeders filled, always. Safflower and thistle for the finches, sunflower and peanut hearts and dried cherries for the jays and thrashers and grosbeaks, suet for the nuthatches and warblers. On good days he'd sat all afternoon at his dining-room window, watching the flash and flutter of wings, small bodies crowding close, pecking and jostling as they'd fought for the food, the shine of their eyes like jet buttons. On the very good days he'd kept his copy of the Sibley guide on his knee and spent hours absorbed in variant colorations, changes in plumage -- spring and summer, juvenile and adult, nuptial and worn -- in the minutiae, the melodic Latin and Greek taxonomy of cheerfully unaware lives.

On the bad days he'd filled the feeders and then gone back to bed.

There were fewer bad days lately, now that he was back with the BAU. The gnawing pain in his gut had eased to an occasional dull ache, his trazodone prescription had been titrated steadily downward, and he almost never dreamed. He was not quite the same as before, never the same as before, but still he was better, unquestionably better. This morning he'd awakened, filled the birdfeeders, put the coffee on, run three miles on the treadmill, showered. When he'd pulled back the curtains in the kitchen the dusty little poplar was filled with birds chattering, singing, quarreling, eating, and he'd poured himself a cup of coffee and walked to the table to watch them, settling in for his breakfast, enjoying the sunshine and the Sunday quiet and the pleasant lethargy of worked muscles. A northern cardinal teetered on one of the nearer feeders, scarlet and bold against the soft colors of the yard and sky; he tilted his head back, his throat fluttering, and sang. Gideon sank into his chair and unfolded his newspaper.

His brain signaled movement before there was sound; something coming on fast, coming just from the edge of his vision. The gunshot-sharp crack against the window was a coda to his coffee cup splintering against the floor.

Gideon crouched, heart pounding, against the far wall. He stayed there, drawing in consciously deep breaths that were as slow as he could make them, as he took in the unbroken window and the silent yard and the poplar tree. The feeders, tenantless, swung lightly in the morning breeze.

He wiped his sweaty hands against his jeans and stood. Walking was odd with his nerves still crackling and misfiring with adrenaline and so he staggered a little, catching at the back of a chair to steady himself. The window-glass was cold against his palm and then against his cheek. In the yard a bright red trail like a slash of blood curved across the clipped grass. Red feathers, lifting and turning with the stirring of the air; the cardinal's feathers. The cardinal itself lay in the grass just under the window he'd struck in his panicked flight. He was pinned beneath the foot of a hawk.

Small hawk, Gideon noted absently. A Cooper's, or possibly a sharp-shinned. The hawk shifted its weight, its talons digging into the cardinal's side as it continued to pluck. The cardinal was bleeding and dazed, its beak opening and closing. It had been hit so hard and so fast that it was still trying to sing.

The hawk's wings flared as it balanced itself against the smaller bird's movements. It had yellow eyes that caught the sunshine with an edge of light and a beak that was sharply downturned with the bitter strength of a tearing hook. The long dark line of its neck stretched gracefully as it lowered its head and began to feed.

Gideon closed his eyes.

Snapshots crowded behind there. Snapshots of a hundred smiling faces and thirteen dead ones, blurred Polaroids of thirteen dead young men; boys, really. And here was the face of another boy, shy and diffident with a pleasant smile and a terrible stutter, wishing him, with painful effort, to have a nice day. A boy who had met his eyes for a perfect, crystallized moment of terrifying clarity, then jammed a shotgun into his ribs. Who'd pressed close and hot against him until the only thing left to breathe was the sour odor of cigarettes and sweating panic, who'd been flushed with frustration, with anger, with rising excitement as he'd tried with his throttled voice to order Gideon to pick up... pick up what?

Pick up the camera.

The Footpath Killer had been unusual in several ways, horribly mundane in most. Lower socio-economic background, broken home, early abandonment, raised by an overly strict parent or grandparent who relentlessly undermined and shamed him, possessing homosexual inclinations that were detected young and then brutally punished. Isolated, interpersonally unsuccessful, pathetically insecure.

Gideon sighed. His breath warmed the glass and brushed back against his skin. He opened his eyes.

The photographs in the dark stinking back room, thirteen keepsakes covered with magic-markered hearts and scrawled notes. They'd found six of those bodies. All of the crime scenes had been the same in their particulars, in the carefully-staged, pitiful details of a fantasy of affection and acceptance. The lonely boy with the stutter had found a way to make what he needed for himself; the simulacra of love.

In the yard, the hawk had finished its meal. Its yellow eyes regarded him without interest as it wiped its beak clean on the grass amid the bright red ruin of the cardinal.

"There is no cruelty," Gideon muttered. His voice cracked, sounding strange to him. He cleared his throat and then stooped, reaching carefully for the pieces of the broken cup.

There is no cruelty like that of hunger.


End file.
